- Welcome
- Calendar
- For Prospective Students
- For Students
- Degree Programs
- Faculty and Staff
- Research
- Public Service and Outreach
- Career Development
- For Alumni and Friends
- News
- Contact Us
Robert M. La Follette
School of Public Affairs
1225 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706
Telephone: 608.262.3581
Fax: 608.265.3233
Last updated:
August 18, 2011
© Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
Alumni and Friends: La Follette Notes Spring 2009
Penniman’s contributions remembered
Clara Penniman’s legacy extends well beyond Wisconsin, reaching students at Sacramento State University in California where one of her students teaches in the master’s program in public policy and administration. Penniman, founder of the La Follette School’s precursor, the Center for the Study of Public Policy and Administration, passed away January 30, at age 94.
Clara Penniman
1914-2009
“I will remember Professor Penniman’s example of being generous with her time and attention to struggling students,” says 1972 center graduate Peter Detwiler, who teaches part time at Sacramento State. “News of her death really stopped me in my tracks. She was about 57 years old when I was her student in 1971-72. That means I’m older now than she was then. And that gives me more encouragement to help my own graduate students.”
As staff director for the California Senate’s Local Government Committee, Detwiler finds that what Penniman taught 37 years ago still rings true. “My course work from June 1971 to June 1972 allowed me to focus on what we called metropolitan problems,” he says. “My work for the California State Senate regularly reaches back to the concepts and insights that I gained during my Madison year.”
A nationally prominent scholar of taxation and public finance, Penniman started the University of Wisconsin’s Center for the Study of Public Policy and Administration in the late 1960s, serving as its first director. The center grew into today’s Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs.
Gifts to Penniman Fund aid students, honor founder of public policy center
Alumni and friends of the Center for the Study of Public Policy and Administration, as well as the La Follette Institute or School, are welcome to donate to the scholarship fund Clara Penniman established for La Follette School students in 1998.
Information available online or by telephone, (608) 263-7657
“Clara was a longtime and generous supporter of the La Follette School of Public Affairs, from its very beginning as the center,” says public affairs professor Karen Holden.
Penniman established the Clara Penniman Fund at the La Follette School in 1998 to support students financially. She also set up the Penniman Prize, which is given at graduation to the graduate student in public affairs who writes the most outstanding paper. The school first gave the prize in 1986, two years after Penniman retired.
After working for the State of Wisconsin for 10 years, Penniman completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Wisconsin–Madison when in her 30s. She returned to UW in 1954 after earning her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Minnesota. She served as chair of the Department of Political Science, from 1963-66, the first woman to do so.
Penniman served on the governor’s Tax Impact Study Committee in 1959 and participated in policy discussions about the university in the subsequent two decades. She served on the committee that recommended a virtual end to in loco parentis policies in 1968; the governor’s panel that oversaw the 1972 merger of the University of Wisconsin System; and the University Committee, with a stint as its first woman chair in 1974, the same year she was named the Oscar Rennebohm
Professor of Public Administration.
Penniman played a crucial role in the university merger discussions, say professors Dennis Dresang and John Witte, who hold joint appointments in the La Follette School and Department of Political Science. “Clara Penniman was a very tough negotiator when she was Madison’s representative on the committee that merged the university and state college systems,” Witte says. “She had as one of her goals keeping the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation as a Madison entity. In that she was successful.”
Penniman published several books and articles, primarily in the fields of tax administration and public administration, including the 1999 book Madison, An Administrative History of Wisconsin’s Capital City 1929-79, authored with Paula A. White.
Penniman remained interested in the La Follette School of Public Affairs and the university as a whole, Holden says, which faculty have appreciated.
“Professor Clara Penniman provided wise and valuable leadership in the founding years of the precursor to the La Follette School of Public Affairs,” says Dresang, who served as associate director and then director of the Center for the Study of Public Policy and Administration in the late 1970s and early 1980s. “Her commitment to excellence left a legacy that benefits all of us.”
The year Detwiler spent in Madison is the only time he has not lived in California, he says. Penniman helped the 22-year-old adapt to his temporary home as well as focus his goals. “Professor Penniman contributed to my professional preparation by taking a chance on a young graduate from a small, West Coast, Catholic, liberal arts college and exposing me to the wonderful diversity, excitement and opportunity that the Madison campus offered in the early 1970s,” Detwiler says. “Her patient attention helped me cope with the university’s academic expectations and the Midwestern culture shock. She also provided a sympathetic ear when I was searching for my professional direction.”
Clara Penniman photo by Paula A. White.
Peter Detwiler photo by Sam Parsons, CSU Sacramento.